Category Archives: Scenarios

Published by the author, June 2019. 107 A4 or American Letter-sized pages. Several colour photos of terrain, figures and table layouts. Two one page advertisements. No Appendices. ISBN 978-1075419058. Available as a paperback from Amazon or as a PDF from PayHip or Wargame Vault The paperback currently retails for $11.25 plus p&p. The PDF is $9.25 from the first location or $10.50 from Wargame Vault.

This is a pair of campaigns designed for Too Fat Lardies’ rules Chain of Command (CoC). Additionally there is a skeleton outline of a campaign for the same company’s What a Tanker! rules (WAT). The campaigns are set during the Second Battle for Kharkov during May 1942, when the Red Army attempted to jump off from salients over the Donets River with the aim of encircling the major city of Kharkov, captured during the autumn of the previous year (and around which Chris has written another similar campaign book). CoC is a set of rules for platoon-sized actions where models represent individual soldiers, weapons and vehicles. A copy of the rules is essential to gain full benefit from this supplement. Furthermore a copy of Too Fat Lardies’ At the Sharp End and Blitzkrieg 1940 supplements would be useful. The content of Chris’ book could be adapted relatively easily to other rulesets — most obviously Bolt Action but also any other sets at the same level of representation, including those written by wargamers themselves. To offer some context to the review, I have played several dozen Chain of Command games and enjoy the rules. I have not played any campaigns with the rules and have not seen any other campaign supplements.

The
structure of the book is straightforward, consisting of an
introduction to the historical campaign followed by the two campaigns
themselves. Necessarily, given the disjunct between the historical
campaign (one involving several corps/divisions on each side) and the
level of representation of the rules, the two campaigns are very much
snapshots of a very small part of the overall action, namely the
advance on 12 May of the Red Army’s 226th
Rifle Division and 36th
Tank Brigade and the counterattack by 3rd
Panzer Division against those Red Army units over 13-16 May.

The
historical introduction is a fairly brief outline of the situation
facing the German and Red Armies in the Kharkov area at the time.
There is a run down of the strength and equipment of the opposing
forces and their respective plans. This is high level material and
serves as background, informing the nature of the men and equipment
which will be available to the opposing players in the wargaming
campaigns. The introduction finishes with some very brief (but handy)
terrain notes and a bibliography.

The campaigns themselves are each structured as seven, platoon-sized actions across tables which are taken from contemporary maps and which represent the ground fought over, or something quite close to that. Each game may be played up to three times and campaign victory points awarded according to how quickly the attacker (Soviets in the first campaign, Germans in the second) can achieve a win – three points for achieving a victory in the first game, two for needing two bites at a scenario, one for three. So a campaign could provide material for up to 21 games if each scenario is played three times. The rules covering each scenario are largely unmodified from the standard CoC rules and each scenario is (generally) one of the types contained at the back of the rules themselves (Probe, Attack/Defence etc.) The campaign’s victor is determined by the number of campaign victory points accrued.

The
troops to be used in each scenario are drawn from a list provided for
each campaign. Those lists are fairly standard for the types of
platoon to be represented. Support lists are tailored to the likely
support available during the historical campaign, with its location
within the TO&E determining whether it is available. So, assets
from within the company are more likely to be available than those
only available within the regiment or brigade or division. Each
scenario has a colour map associated with it and a photograph of the
table, as created using the author’s terrain. Chris has done a fine
job of recreating the terrain from maps available online and provided
embedded links to those maps. There are also a few ‘eye-candy’
shots of figures and terrain.

In short there is sufficient information to play the games under the proposed rules immediately and under other rules with a little work. Few of the scenarios are very unusual or stray from the standard Chain of Command missions but the inclusion of some which use a Tank platoon, rather than an infantry platoon, as the base force is interesting. Furthermore, for the Soviets, those tanks will often be Lend-Lease Matildas or Valentines or Soviet T60s, which makes a nice change from the more usual T34s and KVs. As far as equipment goes it all appears to be fairly accurate although I did baulk at the proposed early model Panzer IVs armed with 50mm guns. BT2s making an appearance seemed a little odd too. Certainly there were a few around but their inclusion whilst the BT5 is absent (and the BT7 present) seemed to be the wrong way around.

I
did find it disappointing that the interplay between the scenarios
within each campaign was limited. For me the attraction of a campaign
centres on managing a limited force over a period longer than a
single battle and, particularly in the first campaign, that is little
in evidence here. For each game, even the second and third time
playing of the same scenario, it is frequently the case that each
side starts afresh with a new platoon. Furthermore it seems at least
possible that a poor early showing by one side will make the campaign
unwinnable before all the scenarios are completed (because of an
excessive number of victory points accrued).

Personally
I feel that this could have been addressed by allowing the attacker a
number of ‘games’ to achieve a victory in the last scenario
(otherwise he loses) rather than the earning of victory points. Once
the attacker has won a scenario he would move on to the next and
would be permitted ten or twelve games in total to reach (and win)
the seventh scenario. Furthermore, I feel this could be enhanced by
allowing the attacker a company
of troops (possibly a battalion for the Soviets in the first
campaign) from which he selects a single platoon to fight each
battle, rather than permitting the selection of another new platoon.
This would introduce a force management aspect to the campaign.
However, this is a personal opinion and it may be that the near
constant refresh of available troops is a feature of other published
Chain of Command campaigns.

I’ll comment only briefly on the WAT campaign as its presentation feels very much to be a bonus ‘add on’. As presented, it requires an umpire and is very much an outline of how a campaign might be run. It pits a German tank company against two Soviet ones with hidden movement moderated by the use of PowerPoint over one of the contemporary maps available online. It looks interesting enough but is nowhere near as detailed as the other campaigns in the book.

In
terms of presentation I feel the book is under par. The
transliteration of Cyrillic is inconsistent, there are several
spelling mistakes and typos and the writing is sometimes ‘clunky’
— in particular plural verbs follow their singular subjects. There
is no ‘house-style’ for numerals or unit designations and there
are one or two incorrect names (Kliest for Kleist, Glanz for Glantz).
The book is a little repetitive and, in particular, sections in the
introductions for the two campaigns are reproduced verbatim. There
appears to be a ‘fossil’ from Chris’ earlier Kharkov campaign
book in the description of the arsenal table as listing equipment
available during 1941 (the campaigns in this book taking place in
1942). None of this is critical or completely prevents understanding.
For me, however, it was distracting and did detract from my enjoyment
of the book.

Overall,
I am not convinced there’s anything particularly innovative about
the game or campaign mechanisms and feel that the latter, in
particular, could be improved. A significant let down for me was the
book’s presentation (e.g. the centre of much of the action is a
town called Nepokrytaya – its spelling changes at least four times
over the course of the book) – such might not be others’
experience. Tighter editing, spell checking and a thorough
proofreading would have significantly improved the book’s impact.
However, this remains a sound product presenting two playable
campaigns (the second being more of a campaign to my eyes) for a
popular ruleset, with enough information to make it adaptable to
other sets of rules. The embedded links are useful and much work has
gone into associating the action with the relevant geography (a
tiresome task in my own experience) resulting in some very attractive
table layouts which are nicely reproduced here. Chris’ research is
evident, and welcome, in framing the matériel
available in the campaigns and I thank him for the opportunity to
review the book.